Monday
A programme called Open House is returning on Channel 4 in which couples wishing to experiment with open relationships go and live in a mansion together and see what’s what. Or see what-whats. Or whatever.
I would love to take part. To live in a mansion is my greatest dream. Basically, the only ambition I have ever had in life is to live in a house so big I never have to leave home. Want a change of scene? Spend a day or two in the east wing, then the west, before returning home-home to the middle beautifully refreshed. I’d like a swimming pool but don’t need a home cinema. Library, obviously. A sprawling floor each for husband and child so we don’t have to see each other except by choice and/or scheduled appointment (nearly 20 years into the whole ‘family’ business and I still find it an outrage that I am expected to interact with them just whenever they see fit). Grounds I can walk in for miles knowing that I won’t see another soul.
I shall fast-forward through the boring open relationship parts. Anyone planning to do likewise and with a decent amount of equity – please get in touch. I have a plan.
Tuesday
It’s been a while but Ann Widdecombe returned to the fray on fine form in an interview on the BBC Politics Live programme. When asked what she would say to people who, in a cost of living crisis, cannot afford to pay for basics such as the ingredients for a cheese sandwich, she replied “Well, then you don’t do the cheese sandwich,” before going on to explain that there’s no such thing as a right to low inflation to keep things – like the daily intake of calories compatible with life – affordable.
I’ve missed this! It took me right back to the days when she was prisons minister, responsible for keeping pregnant women shackled during labour and all that. I remember feeling sorry for people whose memories didn’t stretch back far enough to appreciate her bid for national treasure status via 2010’s Strictly for the roiling piece of absurdity and self-delusion it was. But now she’s back with, in essence, “let them eat air”. Attagirl.
Wednesday
I pledged to emigrate to Japan a few months ago when I experienced my first heated loo seat (that wonderful country, having been at the forefront of such technology, has, I am reliably informed, made such installations de rigueur throughout the land). I was transported to a hitherto undreamed of world of comfort, of utter, utter bliss. You could never have persuaded me, absent the actual touch of buttock to pre-warmed lavatory, that it could make such a difference.
Now, I am drawing up the repatriation papers with even greater rapidity and fervour as I learn that in Japan they are deploying “smile tutors” to help people relearn how to deploy their maxillofacial muscles properly now that the years-long requirement to wear masks to prevent the spread of Covid has been dropped.
As a lifelong possessor of what is commonly if not entirely decorously known as Resting Bitch Face – AKA looking as miserable as sin whatever the prevailing conditions – this is something that, like the heated toilet seat, I have needed all my life without fully realising it. Imagine, someone who can teach you how to smile! Which is to say, someone who can teach you how to fit more seamlessly into society so that you may go about your business more unobtrusively. Because that is the real point of being able to make yourself look pleasant. Instead of badgering you about what’s wrong (“Literally just my face”) or urging you to cheer up, it means people leave you alone. Almost as blissful as a warmed bottom.
Thursday
Martha Stewart has posed for the cover of the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition at the age of 81. What are we to make of this? Is it a sign that ageism is in retreat? That homogeneous beauty standards are on their way out? That experience and wisdom are starting to be prized over youth, stupidity and collagen-rich flesh?
Absolutely not, no! It is a sign that one preternaturally gorgeous octogenarian woman has been allowed on the front cover of an infamously sexist institution to rebut all the claims that it is or has ever been an infamously sexist institution, despite the photographs being lit, shot and/or doctored in such a way as to make her appear no more than 40 (and a Martha Stewart 40 at that). And a sign that you are only a viable woman if you can still make it on to the cover of Sports Illustrated and give a slice of the demographic the horn into your ninth decade.
Just to clear that up. In case any young folk are confused out there.
Friday
I was deliberately early for a meeting on Kings Road because Chelsea, that once bohemian enclave of London, always fascinates me. It was always rich (bohemian costs money, otherwise it’s just hippy skank and there are no mansion blocks in hippy skankland) but now it is just mooooneeeeyyyyy. Mostly new money, but some of the old, arty stuff clings on. Older couples with cut-glass accents carve their way through the blingy Europeans and astonishing ambulant sets of eyebrows and adventures in facial filler that comprise the bulk of the passersby. They are united only by their unconscious willingness to flick the likes of me into the gutter rather than break step.
I stopped for a coffee in one of the posher cafes (hey, I was dressed nice for a meeting and I’d had a shower and everything). A slim, coiffed, camel-coated, tan-jumpered, beige-trousered woman was sitting with her handbag placed on the only free chair. “Sorry,” I said, gesturing towards it. “Is there anyone coming to sit here? Do you mind if I …?” She, perfectly agreeably, moved her bag and I sat down. “Have you been here long?” she said. “What country are you from?” I was perplexed. “England?” I said. “I’ve always lived in London.” Now it was her turn to look perplexed. “Then why were you so worried about sitting down?” she said.
I’ve been turning this over in my mind ever since. As a fellow Englishwoman, was I supposed to feel hers was a kind of handbag of the commons? Even though my hesitation was in fact due to the fact that I am quite common? What about common courtesy? What life had she led that asking permission to intrude on someone’s space was something that spurred deep inquiry? What happens when someone who is foreign does it because they don’t know that this is – I presume – a privilege she only extends to the English? Fascinating, you see. Fascinating.
